Most helpful positive review

Bought this after a talk I attended by Kim Golding which I found incredibly useful and memorable.This book is wordy but essentially gently moves the reader into new attitudes and understandings.I love the references and examples and also the stories at the end of each chapter.This is a really helpful and touching book that I recommend to colleagues and parents.

Most helpful critical review

Although the content is really good i did not like the style of this book as much as 'Building the bonds of attachment. Awakening love in deeply troubled children' written by Dan Hughes himself. I found that book far easier to read and much more powerful in its therapeutic messageAlso, throughout the 'book' there are words - especially at the end of sentences / paragraphs - or parts of words missing which gets really irritating after a while and often requires a bit of guesswork to know what should be written in the gap.Therefore I suggest that if you want to read it, get yourself a traditional book rather than the kindle version

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Bought this after a talk I attended by Kim Golding which I found incredibly useful and memorable.This book is wordy but essentially gently moves the reader into new attitudes and understandings.I love the references and examples and also the stories at the end of each chapter.This is a really helpful and touching book that I recommend to colleagues and parents.

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A good book with very sound advice. Offers solutions to particular problems you may come up against and is very informative. I've not finished it yet because you really have to concentrate. Only downside is I thought it was a bit expensive.

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The authors are well known in adoption and foster care circles but this book provides an approach to parenting that I believe could work for all families, and in fact all relationships.

They advocate playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy in interacting with children, and their key messages are about really accepting what's going on inside a child's mind and what they're feeling, helping them to explore that, and supporting them in what to do about it, rather than telling them not to worry or that they are wrong in their thinking. This creates an atmosphere of trust where your child can feel confident you will really listen and want to understand how they're feeling, rather than being defensive that you are going to tell them they shouldn't or needn't feel like that. It also, the authors suggest, makes children more inclined to accept the changes in behaviour you ask for - its not about letting children behave as they wish, but about showing you are happy to spend time to understand the feelings that drove the behaviour and exploring how else they could be dealt with. I plan to use this approach more with my daughter in the hope she'll be more open with me about her feelings and that as she approaches her teenage years we'll be able to keep the lines of communication open.

There are some useful 'before' and 'after' type scenarios describing typical parent/child exchanges which escalate into rows and stomping offs - and then what it would look like with the PACE approach. These are really useful and help cement the understanding.

The approaches described could also be applied to adult relationships, to help communication between you and your partner for example, and really help them work on their worries themselves rather than just offering advice or giving them platitudes which risk making them feel you don't really 'get it'.

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The content of this book is wonderfully thought-provoking and although is geared specifically to parenting children, much of what is written would easily apply to improving most types of relationships. I found myself crying at several points throughout this book, mainly because it struck so many cords with my own experiences and I feel it has definitely been a worthwhile investment which I will, no doubt, go back to many times. Just one note of warning: the proof reading in the Kindle edition is shocking; words are missing at the ends of sentences and paragraphs for example, but it is worth sticking with.

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Fantastic read... but the other author is Prof. Dan S. Shaw who created the PACE method of supporting young people with attachment challenges... and his PACE approach works... especially with the young people I have the privilege of working with... 0:-)

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So needed this book to quickly help me grasp the concept of PACE. An easy read and makes a lot of sense. The challenge is to be consistent with the approaches but it does explain a lot and put children's (especially children in care's and adopted children's) behaviours into context. A book that does not blind with science but puts the research in easy to understand language. A good book for anyone with children with attachment challenges.

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Although the content is really good i did not like the style of this book as much as 'Building the bonds of attachment. Awakening love in deeply troubled children' written by Dan Hughes himself. I found that book far easier to read and much more powerful in its therapeutic messageAlso, throughout the 'book' there are words - especially at the end of sentences / paragraphs - or parts of words missing which gets really irritating after a while and often requires a bit of guesswork to know what should be written in the gap.Therefore I suggest that if you want to read it, get yourself a traditional book rather than the kindle version

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This is by far the best book I have read and clearly explains how to implement the PACE strategy when parenting kids, whether or not they are your birth children.

PACE stands for Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy. The key thing is that whatever your kids do you should first of all accept it (Acceptance) because if you react by shouting at them they will put up a barrier and feel that you dislike them. You then show your Curiosity by asking e.g. I can see that you are angry with X... why is that? You can then dig down to the route of the problem and tell them that e.g. hitting is not allowed asking what else they could have done. All the questions should be asked in an Emphatic way and it should be a conversation and not an interrogation. Of course, the majority of your interactions should be playful.

The idea is that the children will feel that you truly care about them and what they feel (their inner self) and will learn to think through and resolve problems for themselves.

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A must read for foster carers. I return to this book when things are going right to check. MOST of all it helps my husband and when we hit a problem which we are not sure about.New parents and and adopters would find this book great too.